Currently, portable radio devices, such as portable computers having a radio communication capability and portable radio telephones, are coming into increasing use. By virtue of their portability, users may wish to take such devices across national boundaries. For example, a business person may wish to take a portable computer from his or her home country to another country on a business trip, and still maintain the possibility of communicating via radio transmissions with another computer or with a local area network ("LAN") in the country being visited. However, different countries may have differing regulations controlling the frequencies and transmission types which are permitted to be used for such radio communications. Consequently, manufacturers of such radio communication devices are faced with the need for obtaining official approval for their radio devices in a number of different countries which have differing allowable frequency ranges. It should be understood at this juncture that for a radio transmission, in addition to the frequency, the transmission type is important, by which is meant the modulation type and possibly other features, such as synchronization. For example, the transmission type may be direct-sequence spread-spectrum modulation.